8/12/2024
A super PAC aligned with former President Donald Trump’s campaign says it will spend $100 million on ads between now and Labor Day as Trump looks to recapture momentum that has faltered since Democrats coalesced around Kamala Harris as their presidential nominee.
As part of the $100 million in spending, Make America Great Again, Inc., will be launching a new $70 million wave of TV and digital ads in Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and North Carolina and expanding its efforts in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona, the group’s executive director, David Lee, and senior adviser, Chris Grant, wrote in a new memo. .
The MAGA Inc., memo, addressed to “Interested Parties,” says the PAC will continue trying to portray Harris as “the most radical liberal ever to run for President” and as a “soft-on-crime radical who is too dangerous for the White House.” The ads will highlight the vice president’s record on immigration and her time as San Francisco district attorney, the memo says.
Trump and his campaign have particularly focused on immigration and have falsely cast Harris as the Biden administration’s “border czar,” despite her never having been charged with overseeing the US-Mexico border. She was instead deputized by President Joe Biden to tackle the root causes of migration.
Politico was first to report on the memo from MAGA Inc.
Trump and his campaign have been struggling to deploy a consistent line of attack against Harris, who has cut into Trump’s polling advantage over Biden and raked in hundreds of millions of dollars since she became the presumptive nominee last month. On the trail, Trump has been trying out different attack lines against Harris – for instance, he has repeatedly attacked her racial identity, accusing her of misrepresenting her heritage, and highlighted progressive policies Harris previously voiced support for and now distances herself from.
As CNN previously reported, MAGA Inc. told donors it raised nearly $70 million in May and shared plans to spend $100 million this summer in key battleground states. At the time, Taylor Budowich, the CEO of MAGA Inc., laid out plans to boost Trump in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona.
MAGA Inc. has already run $111.6 million in pro-Trump advertising since the start of 2023 through Monday, including on digital ads. The super PAC played an instrumental role in Trump’s paid messaging during both the primary and the past summer months when the Trump campaign was mostly off the air. And just since Trump became the presumptive GOP nominee after Super Tuesday in March, MAGA Inc. has run $71.2 million worth of advertising through Monday.